dark night he can give the owld haythen the
slip, and make thracks for the river."

"And who knows but he has been able to elude them, and is only waiting
until dark to hunt us up?"

"Yez are right agin; I was about to obsarve the same myself."

There was one view of the case, which if it did occasionally force
itself upon the attention of Howard, he resolutely refused to utter a
reference to it. It was that Elwood had been killed accidentally, or by
the savages. That was too terrible a contingency to take definite shape
until there was no escaping it, and as all of us know better we won't
refer to it again.

"Then he may be in the power of these wandering Indians that took such
an interest in the antelope we left lying down among the rocks."

"Yis; yez are correct sure."

"How is it, Tim, that you agree with every supposition I make, no matter
bow different they are from each other?"

"Wal, you saas me mind is a little foggy, be the towken that I hasn't
had the pipe atween me lips since yesterday. When I'm deprived of that
pleasure I finds meself unable to reason clearly."

"That is the first time I have heard that smoke makes a thing clearer."

"Ah! that's the trouble," added Tim, with a desponding shake of his
head. "If this bad state of things continyees fur a few days longer,
yees'll have to laad me around wid a string, or else taach Terror to do
the same, as yez have saan a poor blind man and his dog do."

"You draw rather a woeful picture of yourself. But I suppose you can
hold out for a few hours longer, and when it becomes dark, we can make a
fire, light your pipe and get far away from it before any of the Indians
could reach the spot."

"I think yez are right, but me intellect is working so faably this
afternoon, that I faars to tax it too hard lest it topples over and gits
upsit intirely. Yis, yez are right."

"Somehow or other I think Shasta is in this neighborhood----"

"So does meself," interrupted Tim, in his anxiety to give assent.

"If he is, he will not forget the kindness of Elwood."

"Never!"

"And whether we wait here or not he will attend to his safety all the
same."

"That he will--you may depend on it."

"Then shall we wait here or hurry down the river for help?"

"Both, or aither as yez plaise."

"But, Tim, we must do one or the other."

"Let us slaap and draam over it."

This struck Howard as a good suggestion, as they both needed slumber
sorely, and adjusting thems